Following their election into power, Boko’s government moved swiftly to remove the crime busting agency, Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) from the Office of the President (OP) to be an independent entity, which raises hope that the new administration is fully committed towards the elimination of corruption and delivering to the promise they made in their 2024 manifesto.
In their 2024 manifesto, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) led by the newly appointed President Boko, the ruling party had promised that when elected into power, they will eliminate corruption by first declaring it a high-level crime and to ensure genuine and fair trial of those caught in corrupt activities.
They had also promised to make the anti-corruption body directly answerable to Parliament and to entrench anti-corruption culture into public education, and the culture of public and private sector workforce.
In his SONA address, Boko assured the public that his government would protect the public’s money.
He said: “You want to know that your tax money is safe with us and that we will protect your money.
“We will fashion a robust, independent anti-corruption agency with the authority to investigate, prosecute and eliminate corruption at all levels.”
The President further warned that he would not tolerate laziness in his administration calling for collaboration to see to it that the 100 days of his presidency set the tone for vigorous public service delivery for a prosperous Botswana.
He promised that they would also create digital transparency mechanisms to enable citizens to track public spending.
For a while now, the public has been accusing the previous government’s administration of mismanagement of public funds and corruption. Few days ago, they took social media platforms by storm calling for the arrests of people they believe have wrongfully benefited from corruption.
When elected into power, the previous administration had also promised to strengthen anti-corruption institutions but never did.
Then, under former president Mokgweetsi Masisi’s tenure, the DCEC unit was reporting to the OP and members of the public argued that the DCEC was serving the government not the public.
A worrisome factor was the turnover at DCEC, head honchos that were fired allegedly for refusing to follow the administration’s orders, which they labelled as corrupt. That also reportedly played a major role in the outcome of this year’s General Election results as people were adamant that they would not vote corrupt people into power.
“We will publish a comprehensive review of public finances to identify waste, corruption, and inefficiencies, followed by a plan for corrective actions,” said Boko this week.
